Wednesday, February 22, 2017

This past week I returned tothe hobby-desk to expandmy 40K Inquisitorial retinue.

This is Kane Corso and 'Daisy'. They are an Arbitrator K9C Hunter/Seeker team originally part of the Adeptus Abites police
force (think of a grittier, more nihilistic version of Judge Dredd and you pretty much have it), but are now valued
members of Inquisitor Rochel-Perez's retinue of espionage operatives,
detectives and combat specialists.

This
set of miniatures was released (I believe) as part of a Forge World
special event several years ago. As can be imagined, they are quite hard
to come by these days unless you know the right, ahem, contacts. In this case the source is a company named, quite appropriately, Black Market Miniatures.
Anyway, I made a cautiously small order and was pleasantly surprised to
receive my figures promptly, wonderfully packaged and beautifully cast
in near-faultless resin.

I've
painted Kane in dark green half armour, carrying a stun baton and a K9C
sensory readout that is wirelessly linked to to his Cyber-Mastiff
'Daisy'.

He
is festooned with purity seals indicating that he's been anointed by a
priest of the Imperial cult, marking him as a man who has seen, or is
about to see, some nasty, nasty things.

'Daisy'
is a heavily augmented Mastiff. I was going to suggest she may be a
Cane Corso (an Italian dog breed), but thought that would make a better name for
her handler. :) She's obviously seen better days, what with all her roughly installed battle augmetics and heavy burn scaring along
her flanks.

A
good portion of her skeleton and musculature has been replaced with a
reinforced chassis, various cybernetics and a bunch of neural injectors for
pain-suppression, heightened senses and adrenaline boosting.

Yes, it
seems that the SPCA is sadly absent in the 41st millennium.

She's
seen here going 'walkies' with her owner. I wonder if Kane cares about
'Imperial On-Leash Ordinances', or the fact that he's neglected to bring
along any poo-bags?

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

I
was flipping through a book on famous movie sets the other day and came
across a section on the Tunisian film location for Luke Skywalker's
home on Tatooine. I immediately felt nostalgic on seeing the iconic
domed habitat, the moisture vapourators and Luke's battered landspeeder.
So I thought I'd create a small vignette depicting the home of Uncle
Owen and Aunt Beru, seen during quieter times, before galactic events
changed everything.

I
found these models as 3D files on Thingiverse and adapted them to my
purposes. They were originally much larger designs, but I wanted
something compact, so I scaled them down to something approximating a
10mm scale.

Luke's landspeeder has been fiddled with a bit to make it thinner,
elongated and somewhat stylized. I tried to keep to the salmon coloured
paint scheme seen in the film.

A few have asked why I didn't put in Luke or perhaps 3PO and R2D2. To be honest I've always liked set-piece scenes where the
characters are not seen. Sometimes the absence of things says more than
having them there. It gives the impression that something is happening
out of sight, and so your mind naturally starts to question and provide a
plausible narrative. Maybe Luke has just come home from checking on the
farm's distant moisture condensers? Or maybe he's just said farewell to
his friend Biggs and is now home for supper, trying to convince his
aunt and uncle to let him join the academy. For me, the absence of
characters makes the scene more compelling and interesting.